Reliable sources have told us that the Travel Channel has canceled Portals to Hell, Ghost Brothers, and other paranormal shows. Is The Travel Channel cancelling all their paranormal shows!? Is Paranormal Programming Dead?! Apparently Kindred Spirits is holding on my their short and curlies but Travel’s paranormal flagship, Ghost Adventures, might still be alive.
The Syfy Network’s paranormal tv shows faced a similar brutal fate years ago when they cancelled Pilgrim Media Group’s Ghost Hunters, Killer Contact, and all other paranormal shows. After the slaughter, The Travel Channel began to resuscitate some of the shows and even mismatched talent, ideas, etc. But the most popular shows always had one thing in common…the word Bagans in the credits.
There’s only so many times you can try to bring something back to life before you say….”ohhh so that’s why Syfy dropped it.”
So why isn’t the paranormal working?
Compared to traditional production budgets these shows do not cost much to produce…which is why people are finding a lot of success just making content themselves and posting it on YouTube. There are paranormal channels on YouTube that have millions of followers and put out new episodes weekly. And some say the talent, locations, and evidence is better than fully produced shows. I guess in the paranormal you don’t have to go overboard to keep an audience interested….remember Found Footage movies? 🙂 Paranormal Activity is still the most profitable film ever made in terms of budget vs profit. It was made for only $15,000.
We made this for nothing …No it’s not a blockbuster hit but it was fun to make and we got to stay in a crazy haunted location. 🙂
What’s Next for Paranormal TV?
We know that everyone likes a good ghost story…especially during Halloween. So I wonder if paranormal shows will begin to be more seasonal. Netflix put out a paranormal show last year but the reviews were pretty brutal, so we can’t tell if that will happen again. We pitched this idea to some producers for a show that would come out every October, but this was during the Travel Channel meltdown so we decided to just put it on YouTube –